Page 17 of Chained to the Horned God
Valoa exhales sharply. “I don’t like him.”
“Neither do I.”
“You’re thinking about it, though.”
I nod, staring at the token where it gleams like a lie in the dust.
“If I get close enough to Lotor,” I murmur, “maybe I can break the chain.”
“Or hang yourself with it,” she warns.
I look at her then, really look. Her face is still smudged with blood, her hair tied back with a scrap of cloth, but her eyes burn like emerald fire. She's scared. Not for herself. For me.
“Maybe,” I say. “But I’m tired of being someone else’s beast.”
She doesn't reply, but she moves closer, pressing her side to mine, grounding me again in something real.
We sit there in silence, both of us staring down a path neither of us wants to walk but knowing, somehow, we’re going to walk it together.
Valoa stays with me that night. She doesn’t say it, doesn’t need to. The way her eyes hold mine says more than words ever could. We’re both shaking—not from cold or fear, but from the pressure of something building between us that neither of us knows how to name. It’s raw. It’s real. It’s a wound and a balm all at once.
The cell is quiet. Outside, the arena’s drums have long since fallen silent, and the corridors beyond these bars echo only with the muffled sounds of chains and water. I sit against the wall, my legs sprawled, ribs bandaged and bruised. She settles beside me slowly, deliberately, like she’s still not sure this is allowed. Her hand brushes mine, tentative at first, then firm.
Our lips meet again. This time it isn’t gentle.
There’s no ceremony to it. No slow exploration. Just hunger. Desperation. Like we’re trying to swallow the pain out of each other’s mouths. She climbs into my lap, straddling me with a kind of wild grace, her fingers gripping the sides of my face like she’s afraid I’ll vanish. I hold her waist, feeling her pulse beat beneath her skin. Her breath is hot against my cheek, ragged and full of need.
When she pulls back to look at me, her eyes shine in the torchlight. “Barsok,” she whispers, voice cracking. “Don’t stop.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” I manage, though my voice is lower than it should be. Rough with emotion.
Her tunic falls to the side as she shrugs it off, baring a map of scars that cut across her torso and back. Some thin and white like old whispers. Others newer. Angrier. My hands tremble when I reach for her, but not from hesitation. From reverence.
She is not delicate. She is not fragile. But tonight, I touch her like glass because she deserves to be worshipped.
My mouth follows my fingers. I kiss every mark she carries like it’s a prayer. Her shoulder. The arch of her collarbone. The crescent just beneath her ribs where a blade nearly took her. She breathes out my name like a secret and wraps her arms around my neck, burying her face into the crook of it.
“You’re not a monster,” she says. “Not to me.”
Her words hit harder than any blade. I don’t deserve them, but I accept them like a sinner drinks from a holy cup. Because I want to believe them.
We come together like broken things trying to be whole.
There is no violence in it. No savagery. Just two people remembering what it feels like to be wanted without pain. Our bodies move slow and then fast and then slow again, finding rhythm not in lust but in sorrow and hope tangled into one. When it’s over, we don’t speak.
Words would ruin it.
Her head is on my chest, my hand in her hair. I feel her fingers trace lines across the old scar near my hip, idle and soft. Her breath warms my skin. I haven’t let anyone this close in years. I forgot what peace could feel like.
She kisses my jaw, lazy and content.
5
VALOA
The roar of the arena has a cadence now. A cruel, brutal rhythm I’ve come to know like a second heartbeat—low and thunderous at first, then rising to a fevered pitch, always followed by a silence thick with tension. That silence is worse than the screams. It means someone is dying... or already dead.
I live in that silence, down in the repurposed stone chamber beneath the stands where the scent of sweat, steel, and blood clings to the walls like mold. The torchlight flickers off the damp stone, casting shadows that jerk and twist with every scream that echoes through these halls. This is where they bring the broken bodies when the crowd is too satisfied to care what happens next.
